The witch hit the water and sank fast and silent. Disappeared, as if the river were the void it resembled. The surface didn’t even change in its slow, oily rippling. Invulnerability talisman or not, he was gone.
Sylvie and Demalion exchanged appalled glances that said the same thing: Don’t you fall in!
The second guard let his gun drop, raised his head sharply. “You’re bleeding, Shadows.”
She felt the sting along her arm where she’d scraped it as she rolled. It didn’t seem newsworthy, but Yvette looked just as stunned. The guard growled low under his breath, began twitching beneath the skin, growing claws and fur and sprouting teeth.
Sorcerous shape-shifter, Sylvie diagnosed. Those fuckers were hard to put down; they could take a lot of abuse, and they healed fast. Mix that with a talisman that granted invulnerability, and he was going to be difficult.
“You killed my men,” Yvette said, “and you didn’t take their talismans? Are you that much of a purist that you’d rather die than wear a magical shield?”
“Nope. Someone else had better uses for them.” She hoped like hell that Zoe and Lupe were wearing them by now. Hoped they were clearing their path out of here. Hoped they’d have enough sense to flee when Marah gave them the word to do so.
Yvette’s face tightened, showed fine lines like cracks in porcelain. “Marah Stone. I wondered what had become of her. I hoped she’d join us.”
“Sorry,” Sylvie said. “She’s got plans. They don’t involve you.”
Demalion shot steadily at the shape-shifter, a repetitive percussion that echoed and echoed against the walls. The man had thrown down his gun, preferring to kill up close and toothy, as so many of the shifting sorcerers did. He kept stalking Demalion, shaking bullets out of his silvery fur, scattering them like overlarge, metallic fleas.
Yvette shook her head. “They won’t involve you, either. I thought you’d be better than this, Shadows. You came before me, weak?” Yvette held up her hand, fisted it suddenly and tossed the spell at Sylvie. She jerked away, almost made it out of range. Her left hand didn’t, trailed behind her, and Sylvie yelped as the bones in her hand broke.
She dodged the next spell that Yvette threw; her hand throbbed and throbbed. She felt it swelling and was thankful that it was her left hand. Not her gun hand.
Even more thankful that for all of Yvette’s skills, she hadn’t managed to get her hands on anything that belonged to Sylvie. A bonebreak spell was hard enough to dodge, but if Yvette had been able to fine-tune it, to use Sylvie’s stolen hair, fingernails, or clothing to home in on her, there would have been no dodging possible.
As it was, Sylvie was running out of time.
Shoot her, her little dark voice shouted.
She hated those damn invulnerability talismans.
Yvette lined up another blast, and Sylvie leaped over the river, headed back toward the upright Lethe stone. The spell hit her ankle. The joint protested and swelled. Her bones … held this time, having learned the taste of the spell enough to reject it. Magical antibodies for the win, she thought wildly, though her left hand complained.
Yvette threw a third blast, stronger still, after Sylvie, reaching her just as she ducked behind the Lethe stone. The spell crashed over it, spilling around the sides to reach her. Sylvie felt the shivery malevolence of it vibrate her bones as it passed.
Shoot her!
The werewolf’s outraged howl drew her attention, got her back on her feet, peering around the stone pillar; Demalion had the shape-shifter up off the ground, grimacing as the wolf savaged his hip, clawed at his chest. It had to outweigh him, but he took three laboring steps and tossed the wolf into the river. It clawed at the sides of the stony riverbank, never gained traction, and vanished.
Demalion staggered, leaned over the water, breathing hard. His blood dripped across the floor. Yvette snarled. She raised her hand, and Demalion raised his head, aware of the danger, but—Sylvie saw he couldn’t move. Too exhausted, too sore, too slow …
Her heart turned over, sick with dread.
He smiled.
Shoot her!
Sylvie put her remaining shots into Yvette; she had never wanted anyone dead as much this woman who threatened to take Demalion from her. Again. Her anger was a rolling, snake-twisting cloud over her entire body and brain, a spreading, numb rage that reached out and smothered, crushed everything before it. The shots were sharp firecrackers in the sudden darkness, crisp and final.
Yvette’s fisted hand splayed open. Fell to her side. The bonebreak spell cracked the floor near her feet. Yvette’s other hand fumbled up toward her chest, toward the invulnerability talisman.
At her touch, while Sylvie’s shots were still echoing, the talisman fell apart, split by Sylvie’s bullets.
The gun’s not the weapon, Marah had said. You are.
For the first time, Sylvie understood what that meant. She wasn’t just resistant to magic used against her. She suppressed magic. She killed the unkillable by taking away their magical protection. She made them mortal. Vulnerable. Killable. She was the weapon. Her bullets were the coup de grace. Nothing more.
Maybe not even that.
Yvette crumpled, bewilderment frozen on her face. Her last expression. Her plans all come to nothing.
“Good timing,” Demalion said. He didn’t sound surprised at all.
She lunged at him, uncertain whether she wanted to kiss him or pummel him senseless. “Bastard,” she snapped. “I thought she was going to kill you.”
“I knew she wasn’t.”
Her hands were shaking, both the broken one and the one that held the empty gun. “You’re bleeding all over the place. Do something about that, would you?”
“I’m all right, Sylvie. I’m all right.” He dragged her close, and she burrowed into him, smelled blood, but his pulse was strong and solid beneath her cheek.
She shook off her fears and straightened her shoulders. “Yeah. You are.”
Demalion looked at the liquid flutter of river water, that oily memory sink, and said, “So, I know we don’t trust Yvette’s word, but I’m concerned about the magical backlash. You’re tough, but that’s a century-old spell you’re planning to disrupt—”
“No,” she said. “Not disrupt. Kill. Put it down. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
She felt distanced from her own body, its shakes and scrapes and broken bones a thin layer above a solid, untouchable core. It seemed so easy to walk across the room, Demalion’s gun collected on the way. To stand between the two Lethe stones, brought up out of a god’s realm. She took a breath and shot them, one after another.
Two bullets against two stones that had deflected spells and semiautomatic gunfire, and when her bullets hit—they quavered and rang like breaking bells. The sigils along their sides wisped out like blown candle flames. The water churned furiously, steaming and bubbling, then drained away.
“Well, that’s that—”
Sylvie hunched, felt oddly like someone had just punched her in the back of her head. Beside her, Demalion fell to his knees. Her vision bobbled, swamped out by memory.
THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, SULKING FURIOUSLY. THE FIRST FAMILY VACATION since the brat sister had been born. Her parents were ignoring her to show off Zoe. Sylvie slunk out of the aquarium, blinking at the cloudy sky until she stopped seeing the blue of carefully maintained tanks. The ocean, grey and jagged and wild, beckoned, and she wandered down to the pier, where dockworkers were scraping barnacles off a recently raised boat.
She sat on a boat cleat and watched their knives work, scrape and twist and scrape and twist. The salt air was soothing, and there were no crying toddlers. On the other side of the pier, a man sat beneath a beach umbrella, minding three separate fishing rods wedged into the wood slats.